Hanging Around The OC

The trial is over — hung jury. Some (one) person couldn't distinguish between reasonable and absolute. The one person described herself as a liberal. I call her a hard-right liberal.

One thing is for sure. Within 30 minutes of entering the room, the liberal stated she would not consider the charge or the evidence. Forcing us to stay for another day was cruel punishment.

Jury pool selection is random, and I believe it. Fifty people are randomly called out of the crowd of a few hundred potential jurors to go to a courtroom – I believe that is random. Twenty-one people are invited to sit in the jury box to be interviewed. It is said to be random – I believe it. Everything up to this point seems "reasonable."

The grilling (or is it drilling?) of 21+ prospective jurors begins and reasonable goes out the window.

The judge's opening remarks and the lawyers questions were almost comical. He gave a typical "it's your right" speech, but everything else was aimed at people whom are too stupid to get out of jury duty (including me.) Some of the questions resulted in real sob stories from the jurors.

Sadly, when all that was done, after booting a lot of reasonable people, they failed to weed out the one liar who was asked several times if she would hear the evidence and make a decision based on the evidence.

The "accused" was clearly shackled with only his right hand free to hold a tiny pencil that wouldn't survive nine holes. Well, only clear if you looked at him. When he was called to the stand by his lawyer, it was while we were out of the room. But, when he left the stand he was clearly shackled.

When it was over the "liberal" asked the defense lawyer where the person had been since the arrest. She actually acted surprised at the reply – jail. What did she think that uniformed and armed guy that was right next to him was for? She didn't notice that when he was on the stand, the other uniformed and armed guy (bailiff) moved to a position between the perp and the door? How detached from reality, unaware of what's happening around you, can you be?

In the deliberation room it was sad. One young juror said "but on TV." The liberal brought in a book to read some quotes, like she was a jet-setting profiler.

Just a sad week in the life of an Orange County dweller.

Tom